THE HAPPINESS RECIPE

A guide to finding joy in the here and now.

As this book opens, debut author and lawyer-turned–happiness coachMorrison gives readers a thumbnail sketch of her own life, which seems, on the surface, to have all the ingredients required for happiness: “I earned the grades, degrees, competitive positions, and dollars,” she writes. “I had the partner, the kids, the stable high-paying job, and the house—everything that, on paper, should have been enough.” However, she says, “I spent countless hours trying to figure out what else I needed to be happy.” She offers her insights on how she found her own joy in a book that, she hastens to add, is not one-size-fits-all but might be useful for many readers. The first of these insights governs the rest: a definition of what she calls priority-alignment living. “Do more of what matters most to you,” she writes, “and let go of the rest.” Happiness, she stresses, isn’t about taking hits and making compromises now in hopes of gaining greater contentment in some hypothetical future; rather, it’s about finding what one needs in each of the “seasons” that life presents. By this, she doesn’t mean “youth, middle age, and old age,” she says, but life phases with personalized definitions that take stock of what one is doing and what one can do to provide oneself with comfort. Morrison presents a clear series of mental exercises designed to help readers identify their goals and separate their anxieties from their passions; if one fails to do so, it can create what the author calls an “Emotional Energy Gap,” which she describes as “the biggest culprit of failed attempts, repeated start-and-stop loops, and procrastination.” In a series of smoothly executed chapters, she elucidates this and other similar concepts. Over the course of her book, her advice is plainspoken and experience-tested, and the latter quality gives the work an extra resonance. Her warm tone makes even familiar nostrums feel sincere, as when she writes, “In my experience, doing more of what doesn’t make you happy isn’t how you get happier.”

A personal and inviting investigation of how to find real happiness.